The Ben Paul Era
The Ben Paul Era (AKA "Classical Campmantiquity") is commonly known as a dark age of the OTWDF community. While the whole era wasn't bad, its turbulent points are the most well known and the most often referenced. This was the time where notorious dictator Ben Paul (AKA Campman) ruled supreme. The Ben Paul Era Late July 2013 * Harpadarpa joins the TTG forum. Early August 2013 * TTG announces a new, Reddit inspired layout, designed to create more coherent conversations. Most members are pretty damn displeased with this. On the day of the switch, all established members of the forum are sent a PM by The Law. He tells everyone that fellow member has established a forum. registers, and most of the main community is at this forum. * Not much note-worthy happens for a while. The First Golden Age * A member named Deadwaste joins the forum. * IWMT (now known as Admin) spends a long time working on an interactive fan fic, titled Great Follies. * Justin (formerly known as Ben Paul) posts an announcement that TTG has some sort of copyright infringement claim on the website. The forum is set to be deleted in several days. IWMT, and Cany0udance (AKA Cany) both volunteer to make copyright free forums for us to move to. Domewing333 helps IWMT decorate and organize his forum. We all preemptively decide that IWMT's forum is better than Cany's practically blank, and very boring forum look. Deletion Day 2013 * Nothing happens. Justin reveals that it was all an elaborate troll that he set up. Domewing333 disappears from the forum. Later on in 2013 * Great Follies is deleted. IWMT blames this on Vincent (formerly known as Justin, formerly known as Ben Paul), and aggressively insults him for a short while. Vincent is furious. IWMT is permabanned. People consider abandoning ship, jumping over toIWMT's website, but Cany being butthurt about everyone rejecting his forum, compounded with the investment we had in the current forum, meant that nobody ever jumped ship. Deadwaste was the only one who consistently came to IWMT's forum, and kept IWMTcompany. Deadwaste often brought up #freeIWMT. November 2013 * Campman (formerly known as Vincent, formerly known as Justin, formerly known as Ben Paul, formerly known as a bunch of other shit, too) has expanded his staff tremendously. Campman and Master Psychic do most of the admin work. Just to infuriate Master Psychic, and the several others with equivalent rank, however, Campman puts Cany0udance into a higher, practically unrestricted rank. Campman offers the same position to MoustachedPotato (now known as Brotato), but Potato declines, and refersCampman to Harpadarpa. Harpadarpa accepts. * Just for fun, Harpadarpa looks at the banned members. As expected, he sees IWMT, and a few others who had been banned. What Harpadarpa did not expect, and was shocked to see, was that something around 25% of all registered members were banned. The vast majority of these members had a small note next to them. "iwmt". Harpadarpa approached Campman and Cany, asking what the reason for this was. Campman explained that he had been banning people on suspicion of them being IWMT. Harp was shocked that SO MANY people would be banned on suspicion alone. * Harpadarpa sends a PM out to all staff, bar Campman, explaining the situation, and trying to get a vote on whether or not Campman should be ousted. * Campman sends Harpadarpa a message, stating that Cany ratted Harpadarpa out. He asked for last words before Harp's permaban. Harpadarpa went with "Go fuck yourself." December 2013 * Harp tries reintegrating into the TTG forum. He found few of the TTG members interesting. However, he also foundDomewing. They reconnect and have a generally friendly relationship. Harp fills Dome in on the current situation. Dome gives Harp the link to IWMT's forum, and says that, should Campman be ousted, and the members move to IWMT's forum, Dome will return. * Harp began to communicate with Deadwaste. IWMT had largely disappeared, appearing on the forum maybe once every week or so. Deadwaste says that people are mad about Harp's ban. Deadwaste tells others on the main forum that Harp is back.Bio and Potato come to say hello to their friend. Cany0udance appears as well. Cany states that all Harp needs to do is apologize, and he can come back to the main forum, sans Admin-ship. Harp tells the whole story, which apparently had not been released to the general public in its full capacity. Bio, Potato, and Deadwaste head back to the main forum and inform everybody on the situation. * Cany, on orders from Campman, comes back to IWMT's forum, pleading with Harp, asking Harp to apologize. Harp tellsCany that he can go fuck himself, too. Cany stops asking Harp to apologize, and says, "You're unbanned, Harp. Come back." Harp takes the high road, and refuses to come back until all unfairly banned persons are unbanned. Eventually, Campman yields. IWMT and Harpreturn to the main forum. No other banned members resurface. * Harp sees that everything is normal, but attempts to push his advantage. He tells Campman that he wants a formal apology, to prove that it won't happen again. Harp knows that the apology could possibly mean nothing, but chooses to believe thatCampman is too prideful to lie outright. Campman does not reply. Harp says that Campman has 7 days to apologize until Harp leaves for good. * Things generally went well, over that next week. Harp notified Dome that Campman was not likely to apologize, and that he knew the loss of Harp would bring at least some to IWMT's forum. The mood had normalized, and was even happier than before, with the return of IWMT. Harp was even tempted not to stay true to his word, and just let Campman stay in charge, even whenCampman did not apologize on that seventh day. However... On the Seventh Day * Harp spends a half hour on a powerful, nice, passive goodbye post, which encourages members to follow Harp toIWMT's forum before he closes the tab. Bio comes onto IWMT's forum, and informs Harp that his goodbye post was deleted. This infuriates Harp. He goes back, writes another, shorter, less nice post, and it's deleted within 10 minutes. This sends Harp into full frenzy. He changes his entire profile into orders directed at Campman, stating "Bring post Back!" Harp is again permabanned, not 5 minutes later. His account is deleted by Campman himself. * I couldn't quite recount everything that happened after that, but eventually, Harp proved the trolling intent of Campman, and also accused Cany of having similar intent. Eventually, the forum members, questioning Campman's authority were permabanned and deleted one by one. We had all switched to IWMT's forum. IWMT's first action as Admin was to permaban Campman. Domereturned shortly thereafter. Thus began The Domewing Era... Category:Eras